Mariah Carey Admits She Doesn't 'Give a Damn' About the GRAMMYs

In a new interview with V magazine, the 47-year-old singer gets candid about the awards show, and why she doesn't feel the need to work around its timeline.

"In the music business, if you care about the GRAMMYs and submitting your stuff before a certain time frame, you want a single out in the summer, and then you want to have your record [out] before the GRAMMYs [consideration] deadline, which has changed ... frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," says Carey. "I mean, I have five GRAMMYs. That’s cute."

"There’s people that have been doing this half the time that have twice as many," she continues. "I won two GRAMMYs the first year I started, but after that, [the GRAMMYs] are like, 'We don’t go with the people that are selling a lot of records and are popular; we’re gonna go the opposite way.' So I got screwed out of certain years. I wasn’t bitter about it. I was just like, 'OK, well, I guess I’m not standing here barefoot onstage singing and trying to go a certain way. I’m just me.'"

"I'm in the studio starting a new album of regular music," she teases. "Meaning, it’s not a Christmas album. I'm kind of restarting, and I'm working with Roc Nation now, so that's great."

"I had a really incredible meeting," she adds. "Just a musical, good meeting of the minds, with Jay Brown, JAY-Z, and Tata [Tyran Smith], who's an incredible person. We all just kind of threw some ideas around. So, we're starting from the musical place rather than, like, 'What’s the hook?' It's gotta be done that way."

Carey says that in this industry, women often don't get enough credit for their songwriting. It's something she hopes to change.

"Unless they are known visually as someone strumming a guitar, or they're behind a piano most of the time. I also have that diva thing attached to me," she explains. "I don't want to give away too many people that I'm working with, but there's a different approach that I'm taking as an artist. I think it’s like a fresh start. A lot of people see that whole other image. They see this diva; they see hair, makeup, bod, clothes, whatever it is -- and hand gestures -- and they're like, 'Oh. They don't think songwriter.' But I look at myself as a songwriter first, and then a singer. That's what I love to do the most."